


we're stealing moments (moments away)

by harrietspecter



Category: Transplant (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27143482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietspecter/pseuds/harrietspecter
Summary: They're never going to be the nine-to-five normal, but maybe they can make this into something worthwhile.Post 1.11
Relationships: Jed Bishop/Claire Malone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	we're stealing moments (moments away)

**Author's Note:**

> To A. My Torri H. partner in crime.

He spots Claire as she walks from the nurses' locker room/lounge to the atrium exit. He’s been waiting for seven minutes. Her shift ended ten minutes ago. And, he knows she likes to be the last to leave as they hand duties over to the overnight shift crew. He loiters a little, but it's his department and he can wait for whatever and whoever he prefers. Perks of being the man, so to speak.

He wants to start off right. He thinks he’s done something right with their conversation this afternoon. He had stayed for a little while, sitting facing her as his back rested against the tabletop. He held her hand in his as she kissed him again. She hummed against his mouth, skimmed his palm with her fingers as she played with his hand. He even walked her back to the building and brushed his arm against her own. His fingers captured hers at the crosswalk before it had signalled them to walk across the street and back into the emergency department. Her small smile playing on her lips belayed the huff she gave him as he opened the atrium door for her.

So, now he’s waiting for her at the end of their shift because neither of them has a double shift, everyone has shown up for the overnight shift, and he wants to continue what he had started earlier.

“A wee mishap,” he raises his voice a little to get her attention as he recalls the Montreal to the Falls bike riding couple they’d treated earlier that day and her summary of the incident that led them to the emergency department.

“You can't be too careful with a head injury,” she parrots in the same glib tone as she looks over her shoulder but doesn’t stop walking.

He smirks a little and looks at her dressed in her street attire. Her scrubs probably in her backpack slung over her shoulder.

“Dinner?” He asks as he nods out the door to the atrium.

“I’ll book us a place at the most expensive place in the city,” she teases.

When she had finally accepted his dinner offer a while ago, he had made reservations at this little farm to table pop-up with a vegetarian menu. It was the sort of thing that the owner invited people rather than the reservation kind of dinner. The invite-only affair meant she didn’t actually pay for anything since it was Doctor Jed Bishop, Emergency Department Chief at York Memorial, whose reputation and feedback they wanted, more than his money (or hers). Tables for two and four had lined the outdoor venue. Luckily they’d gotten there in enough time not to have to share with anyone else and make conversation with strangers. She had picked the cucumbers out from the salad course and had placed them all on his plate as he reminded her she liked pickles and cucumbers were pickled to become pickles.

“You know anything open at midnight? Because that’s the time we’re going to eat if we have to take the metro,” He asks and bumps her shoulder with a cheeky smirk.

“Fine,” she sighs but counters it as she reaches down blindly for his hand and entwines their fingers just like a few hours ago. “But you’ll have to ride the metro tomorrow morning.”

“I took tomorrow off.”

She tugs at his hand, scoffing a little at the notion of him taking a day off when it's Wendy Atwater’s usual day off from the hospital to go and teach emergent medicine down at York University. And, it's not her usual day off, odd week’s Thursday. So, of course, he wouldn’t miss the day he gets to be the attending doctor.

Although she doesn’t own a car, she knows the way to the parking garage. It would have been easier to go across the walking bridge rather than the street crosswalk, but the atrium is the closest exit to the metro entrance.

He takes her backpack and puts it in the trunk with his messenger bag as she climbs into the passenger seat.

“Passenger gives directions,” he notes as he starts the car.

She chuckles as he reverses and she points him to the left as he moves from the parking garage out into the street.

—

There’s a little, hole in the wall, family-owned, Thai food place two metro stops away from Claire’s apartment. She’s ordered almost every single thing on the menu but the spicy drunken fried rice is her go-to item. This place is her go-to after a double shift where cooking is too much of a chore. It’s about an hour before closing and normally she would eat a handful of something at home but she hasn’t eaten a proper meal and they both like Thai food. She’s become a regular since she left Eric. Maybe coming at least once a week. She doesn’t know if it’s a little pathetic or if the family considers her another regular who supports small eateries.

She doesn’t even open the menu but watches as Jed flips over his phone so it’s face down on the table before taking a menu from the stack of two between them.

The waitress brings back two glasses of water and nods at Claire before bustling over to the other table in the corner.

He peruses the menu before finally closing it and setting it atop the one she didn't pick up.

“Drunken fried rice, extra vegetables, spicy two?” He asks with a nod of his chin to the menu.

She laughs quietly, wondering how predictable her day has been for him to guess exactly what she was planning on ordering.

“And you considered the sweet and sour before going with the basil stir fry with chicken and pineapple fried rice,” she guesses.

“Good guess,” he nods.

Their waitress comes up to the table a moment later with a little basket of shrimp chips and nam prik pao. She looks between them and asks if they’re ready to order.

“Oh, and the potstickers, please,” Claire adds as an afterthought after Jed orders his dinner.

The waitress nods, distributes the appetizer plates and silverware, before telling them the potstickers will be a few minutes.

Claire eagerly takes a shrimp chip and cracks it in half over the appetizer plate. Dumping half the nam prik pao on her plate, she dips the puffed chip into the sauce and pops it in her mouth. She’s hungry. Her last real meal had been well over six hours ago.

Jed watches her with half a smile playing on his lips as he leans back in his chair.

“What?” She asks a little self consciously.

He shakes his head.

“It’s just a nice, normal night.”

“Normal?” Claire questions him with a laugh and dips the remaining half of her chip. “Can we even do normal, Jed?”

“Well, not a nine to five normal, no. But I want to do this right, Claire.”

She takes a moment. Looks away from his open, honest expression to take another shrimp chip. She breaks it into four this time.

“It's not going to be that simple, you know,” she points out before she pops the chip into her mouth and chews. “We’re both workaholics.”

“I know. Burdened with glorious purpose,” he nods as he reiterates his earlier sentiment that still holds true. But he has a small smile on his face as he shrugs his shoulders.

He takes his hand and extends it toward her on the table, palms up.

She ducks her chin and hums a little before reaching out her own and slips her hand into his. She feels a little more content as he folds her hand into his grip. It’s for a moment. His hand squeezes her own and then releases it. And both of them move their hands back to their designated sides of the table. After all, when they’d been out to dinners before, Claire loved to make fun of the couples that always had to sit on the same side of the booth or the ones who held hands the entire dinner and annoyed waiters and waitresses trying to find space to put down food or drinks at tables.

“So, what in the hell are these things?” He asks as he takes a green puffed chip from the basket of multicoloured chips.

She laughs and shakes her head before explaining what makes a shrimp chip a shrimp chip.

The waitress interrupts their conversation about her mother’s house to bring the chicken potstickers. Claire finishes the thought before she forgets, though. Tells him how much she still has to do in the next thirty days since she picked an offer. Claire can’t help but trail off and grin as the waitress leaves, though.

He chuckles under his breath and watches as she picks up her chopsticks, puts her napkin in her lap, and takes one of the two brown dipping sauces on the plate. She picks up a potsticker, dips, and bites into it.

“I don’t know if it’s because I’m starving or if these are really good tonight, but they’re amazing,” she gestures to the plate of five remaining.

She’s not a vegetarian by any means. But she’ll choose vegetables over meat any day of the week. One weakness is these chicken potstickers.

“Curonian Spit,” he says abruptly as he picks up a potsticker and looks over at her.

Claire looks up and blinks a couple of times, curious about what sort of segue this is.

“I’m sorry?” She frowns, slightly confused, as she pauses putting the other half in her mouth.

“There’s a town in Lithuania called Nida near the largest sand dunes in Europe, the Curonian Spit. We could go there. It’s no temporary Black Rock City in Nevada, but it’s pretty remote. Step too far and you’ll be in Russia and then there’s no telling what’s in store,” he trails off with a shrug of his shoulders.

Her head tilts in curiosity. She puts her elbows on the table and she leans in a little.

“You’ve actually thought about this, haven’t you?” She says, her tone carrying slight disbelief.

He looks over at her, taking the time to pop an entire potsticker into his mouth before nodding once.

She gives him a small, soft smile. The same one she gave him this afternoon after he told her he’d follow her anywhere.

“What about a weekend away?” She asks, raising her brows. Maybe start small with her mother’s house that isn’t that far out of town. And then maybe a weekend in a cabin in the woods. Well, their version of a weekend meaning two days off in a row.

“Two days off in a row?” He asks with a deep sigh that was purely posturing for posturing sake. He pretends to think about it while grabbing another potsticker. “I haven’t done that since Jonah had that grade six promotion and the school made a big pomp and circumstance of a little certificate that didn’t mean anything to anyone.”

Claire bites her lip as she goes for another potsticker, but a laugh escapes anyway.

“We’ll try it after you actually take a day off,” she reminds him. “Then maybe we’ll do your trip to the Baltic if you can be away from work that long.”

“All right,” he pops another potsticker into his mouth before he puts the chopsticks on his plate and turns his phone over, unlocking it with his face.

“When’s your next day off?” He asks, opening up his calendar. “The 15th?”

She shares her calendar with him at work. He has every other chief, the medical director, and Wendy Atwater’s, too. He’s memorized her schedule. Has for years. So, it’s no surprise he knows what her next day off is.

She scrunches her nose as he mocks her a little.

“There,” he says a few minutes later. He hands her the phone and there on his calendar is his invite to the medical director with “Bishop - ooo” listed as the event invite title.

“You think Doctor Dutton is going to have some sort of episode when he finds out you’ve requested a day off?” She teases as she hands his phone back.

He turns it to put the face of the phone down on the table again, ignoring the texts from Mags that had appeared as she looked and the other 138 emails in his inbox.

“Possibly.”

There was a beat of silence before he posed his next question.

“So, do we have any plans for the 15th?”

“We are going to the pumpkin patch,” she emphasizes the 'we' with a small grin as she leans into the table.

“You and your ugly pumpkins.”

Claire likes all the unique pumpkins. The porcelain doll variety is her new favourite. It’s a muted, softer orange pumpkin. She likes pairing that with the sage green variety. She likes autumn rather than Halloween. But she’ll get the pumpkins and carve one into a Jack o lantern, leaving the rest as decorations. She used to help at her mother’s house on Halloween, passing out the king-sized candy bars for the few families in that part of town.

The waitress brings dinner, interrupting the story he tells about the gourd smashing he used to do in his youth. Scotland may not celebrate Halloween like the States or Canada, but they had plenty of gourds to smash.

They begin to eat. Conversation flows between bites. Jed uses his spoon to steal some of her fried rice since the pineapple fried rice was different from the drunken rice. By the end, he’s eaten his entire plate that has enough for two meals and she’s made a dent into the pile of rice on her plate.

“You come here often?” He asks as he watches her take the orange slice from her plate and eat it. It’s a palate cleanser.

“It’s only two stops away,” Claire nods.

“Well, I’d be here almost every day if the entire menu is like this meal.”

Claire laughs and bites her lip. At least they’re on the same page this restaurant would be worth the long wait and coming back as often as she does.

He pays when the bill comes and she doesn’t protest. She grabs the wrapped butter mints before he can get them. She crinkles the wrappers between her fingers, trying to find the bigger mint before she drops the smaller one in his palm.

“That’s a look,” she laughs aloud as he holds a pen with a giant flower on the end so customers don’t steal the pens.

“I should make these the standard pens we all carry,” he notes as he twirls it before signing his name at the bottom of the merchant copy.

“Mmh,” she hums in mock agreement. “Wouldn’t have to worry about anything airborne going from patient to patient with that type of pen at all.”

It’s ironic that he’s a germaphobe as an emergency room doctor. And now he’s thinking about the pen he’s touched and how many people have actually touched it before him and he doubts there is much sanitizing to be done on a wrapped pen since most people don’t go down this particular rabbit hole. But when he looks up, Claire is holding out a wet wipe package.

He drops the pen back to the bill holder and expresses his thanks as he swipes the little packaged wipe.

When they get up, she takes her box of leftovers and gets to the door first, backing into the door and waving her thanks at the staff. She holds the door open and he walks through, grabbing for her hand and tugs her away from the door as they make their way down the few blocks to the paid parking lot where they had parked earlier.

“Why don’t you stay the night?” He asks her quietly.

By saying yes, she would change the state of play from their original status, which is what he’d been aiming to do that afternoon. They usually didn’t do the whole sleepover thing. She had sometimes stayed the night after he had separated and then divorced Kathryn. She had never done it when they restarted whatever it was they’d been doing before her needing some space to figure her life out. And, he had never been to Claire’s. Never to the house that she used to share with Eric. Never to her new apartment. He was okay with that, for now. Because he had been to her mother’s house back in the day. There was room for potential on both sides of this if she said yes.

She takes the three blocks to contemplate her answer. They stop at the passenger side of the car and rather than opening the door, she faces him.

“Okay,” she nods, sure of herself and her answer. “I’m going to need a bag so I don’t have to wear this to the hospital for two days straight.”

He gets a little smile like this afternoon and nods at her answer. He gives her face a once over and finds no doubt in the answer she’s given him. He leans in and presses his lips to her own. It’s brief, more of a lingering brush, and he can feel her lean into his slightly taller frame for a moment. He presses his forehead to hers, soaking up the day, and the past hour in particular, before he steps back and releases her hand.

“It’s freezing out here,” he points out with a laugh.

“Baby,” she shakes her head as she opens the door.

When he turns on the car, he puts the seat warmers on.

“Bet they don’t have that on public transportation.”

She laughs aloud because, in a way, it could happen. Someone could have sat for a while and gotten to their stop, essentially warming the seat for the next unlucky individual. But she’s not going to mention that to him. Not before she makes him get on the metro at any rate.

“Nope,” she tells him. “You beat them there.”

“I’ll need directions,” he reminds her.

“I know,” she lets him know as she leans her arm against the middle console to rest beside his own arm. “Turn right then you’ll turn right at the light.”

* * *

It’s her alarm that wakes them. He’s more on her side of the bed than his. His head is mostly off the pillow. Instead, it's touching her tank top covered back as she reaches out from the sheets and duvet they’re tucked under to silence the alarm on her phone.

He had stayed up way too late watching her sleep next to him. His fingers had reached out and brushed back little wispy hairs behind her ear when she had turned and her nose crinkled feeling something out of place. But she had stayed asleep and he considered his work a success.

“It’s early,” he sighs into the pillow and his arm wraps sleepily around her, pulling her close.

He feels her hum her acknowledgment.

“If we took my car, we wouldn’t have to wake up so early,” he points out as his hand slips under her tank top. Her skin is warm and she’s still sleepily pliant as his nimble fingers curl around her hip. “Taking the metro seems like an entire planned event.”

“I like the metro,” she says, turning over to face him. She gives him a soft smile and runs her hands through his hair, making his bed head worse before she tucks them back between their bodies. "Of course, I had to plan it because we're at your place and it’s a new schedule for me to learn."

“And I said I’d follow you anywhere,” he reminds himself aloud. “Even onto the metro.”

“I’ll pack an extra bottle of hand sanitizer and wipes in my bag,” she says as she props herself up a little. A hand braces some of her weight on his chest as she leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“But we’re going to have to get up now if you want to eat breakfast and get to work on time,” she notes as she starts to pull away.

“We can get breakfast in the cafeteria. Give me ten minutes,” he tells her as he pulls at her tank top as she attempts to escape his bed. She doesn’t put up much of a fight, curling back up against him as he wraps an arm around her again.

He closes his eyes, fingers tracing up and down her back as one of her arms wraps around his middle.

“This is nice,” he points out mostly to himself.

She makes a sound that could be taken either way.

He dozes for the ten minutes and doesn’t protest as she gets up and heads for the washroom. He hears the toilet flush, the taps run, and a moment later the shower turns on.

Sitting up, the sheets pool around him as he yawns and orients himself before moving out of bed. He heads to his dresser, pulling out a plain t-shirt from the top drawer to put over his head to ward off the slight chill of the autumn morning.

He shuffles to the kitchen, pulling the coffeemaker away from underneath the overhead cabinets. Then pulls out the beans, grinder, and a filter. The coffee is percolating a few minutes later, and he sits on the couch to wait. He sighs as he turns on the news and listens to the muffled sound of the water running in the washroom. The water stops running between the weather forecast breakdown and he waits a few more minutes before getting up and making two cups of coffee. His coffee is black with a half spoonful of sugar. He's about to spoon sugar into hers but remembers a couple of weeks ago she had brought some of her favourite foods over. So, he pulls out two dates from his pantry and sticks them in the second cup, adding the coffee, and stirring until he feels the dehydrated fruit dissolve. Adding a few splashes of milk, he stirs it again and considers his first task of the day a success.

Armed with the two cups, he heads back to the bedroom and into the washroom where Claire is wrapped in a towel, wet hair combed through, and tendrils of water drip down her back and into the towel from her hair.

“Remind me to bring my microfiber hair wrap next time,” she says as she looks up at his reflection.

“Haven’t got a clue what that means, but will do,” he nods and sets down her cup of coffee in front of her.

“Thank you,” she says with a small smile as fingers curl around the cup and she takes a sip of the coffee. “You remembered.”

“Claire,” he begins. “You should probably know I don’t forget much about you.”

She looks in the mirror and watches him look over at her.

“I know,” she nods and moves to look from his reflection to looking at him behind her. Because she remembers all the little things, too. It’s why she always carries little sanitizing wipes at the bottom of her bag. And has little shortbread biscuits in her desk drawer at work that she knows he takes whenever he’s loitering at the nurses' station. She’s also bought him a package of Tunnock teacakes every year because they were his mother’s favourite, and on her birthday, he always has one.

He takes a sip of his own coffee and winces, setting it down where he had set hers.

She half watches him in the mirror as he turns his back and moves to the shower, turning on the taps before he divests himself of his shirt and boxer briefs.

“See something you like?” He smirks as he opens the glass door and steps in.

“I’m mostly wondering why you poured a cup of coffee and are now letting it get cold while you shower.”

He turns under the showerhead, wetting his hair.

“I have black coffee, it's scalding compared to yours that has cream,” he points out.

She sets her own mug down and reaches for his, taking a sip.

“You and I have differing opinions on scalding,” she turns up her nose as she sets his coffee on the counter again. Although he has some sugar in it, it's too acidic for her. She likes the balance of cream and the natural sugar from the dates.

“I can’t hear you,” he laughs at himself as he points above himself, signalling he’s under the spray of the water as she shakes her head and ignores him.

She takes her coffee back and exits the washroom to get dressed.

He lathers his hair in shampoo and thinks about their upcoming 12-hour shift, wondering if they can somehow manage the same breaks today. The fact that they’re doing this, really doing this, still amazes him.

He knows they’re older and their bodies no longer look like they did when they were in their twenties or thirties, but they’re still relatively fit. Right now, as he walks from the washroom to the bedroom with his skin still a light pink from the heat of the water and his towel low on his hips, he watches Claire pause as she buttons her shirt to give him a once over.

In the small space of his shower beginning and ending, she’s put on her bra, underwear, a black tank top, and a button-up long-sleeved plaid shirt.

“I could get used to this, you know,” he says cheekily as he moves to the dresser across from his bed and pulls out a pair of boxer briefs.

She laughs, can’t help it, and he’s lost.

She leans against the edge of his bed, jeans in hand, and he crowds her space.

“Could you now?” She asks, pretending to be oblivious as to why.

He hums a yes, moving closer to her.

“Only because I’d finally know what’s underneath those scrubs of yours every day.”

She sputters a laugh and shakes her head as he leans down and presses his lips to hers.

If he had the time, he’d easily spend it reacquainting himself with every inch of Claire Malone. It feels different this time. Different from the time they ended things the first time. Different from the spell they ended a few weeks ago when they were going to dinner and then coming back to his place but she wouldn’t spend the night.

“Come back here tonight after your shift?” he asks against her mouth.

She kisses him before answering. His bottom lip pulled between her teeth for the briefest moments before she leaned back a little, meeting his eyes.

“I packed for a few days,” she lets him know.

“Brilliant,” he answers, cupping her cheeks in his hands and leaning down to kiss her again.

Maybe he can draw this out just long enough that they accidentally miss the metro. He’ll promise to ride it, but he has more pressing demands.

—

It’s a week later when Claire finally gets him onto the metro. The station is a few blocks away from his apartment and he holds her hand the entire way.

“Don’t they have a comparable system in Scotland?” Claire asks, referencing the public transportation system.

He wobbles his head back and forth, cringing a little at the memory.

“It’s okay,” he shrugs. “The best way is by train if you don’t have a car. But that’s not public transport. Public transport varies from city to city, really.”

She nods thoughtfully. It’s the same in North America.

“Well, they have a good system here.”

“So you keep telling me.”

She laughs once and squeezes his hand as they follow the general throng of people. Instead of going up the steps with the masses, she bypasses them to head to a little ticketing vending machine, quickly going through the motions on the screen and inserting a credit card before he can even think to pull out his wallet to pay for his ticket.

“Keep it in case they have inspections,” she says as she hands over a little stub that tells him it's valid until 11:59 pm tomorrow. “Usually it’s an honour system unless the transit police are up there. I think they’re around every other month if your station is anything like mine. They have other areas they patrol more.”

He sticks it in the inside of his coat pocket where he can easily reach it if need be.

They head up the stairs to the platform and stand on the fringes of the other waiting passengers. Most of them seem to be business executives and university age kids.

“Seats are generally limited. I stand,” she points out, remembering her thought last week when he brought up his car’s seat heaters and how public transport doesn’t have them. “Try to get near the window rather than the doors. Less pushing and shoving.”

He nods.

Four minutes later, a tinny voice announces in English and then in French, the train is arriving and to step back from the platform. A bell dings and the doors open onto the opposite side of the platform to allow passengers exiting the cars some space to exit without having awaiting passengers pushing through to try and enter the train cars.

The doors on their side of the platform open and Claire tugs at him to move along and into one of the waiting cars. She finds space against the wall of the car with the giant window that allows them to look at all the other connected cars and it's not too bad. The other cars are a lot fuller than their own, but there’s still a lot more people than his actual car fits.

She lets go of his hand and tells him to hold onto the railing at their hips. He flounders a little, contemplating the germs and how he has no Kleenex, or towel, or even a handkerchief to wrap around the railing before a bell dings, the doors close, and the car lurches forward. He’s not holding onto anything and the initial jerked movements of the train cars getting going get him off balance enough to send him into the side of the car as Claire laughs at his peril before she grabs his forearm and pulls him into her space.

One of his legs slides between her own, dress shoe almost touching the wall of the metro car, and her hand lets go of his forearm to wrap around his waist underneath his coat. His hands flail a little, unsure what to do and not wanting to hold onto the railing above his head or at Claire’s hip.

“Around my shoulders,” she tells him as if she can read his mind.

He does just that and he trusts she’s been at this long enough to know she can hold onto the railing and to him at the same time. He may be holding her a little tighter than usual, but it’s their safety he’s keeping in mind.

“How long is this ride again?” He asks.

“Forty minutes, give or take,” she answers.

Practically plastered up against Claire for the next forty minutes won’t kill him, but he’s amused that she’d rather spend forty minutes in public transportation when taking his car is only a twenty-minute trip from his apartment to the hospital.

The first stop the metro makes is jarring for him. Claire had tightened her hold on him as a bell dinged twice, but he hadn’t known what it was for. And he’s sure he would have sailed into the wall again. Instead, at the halting of the car, as it announced the stop, he tightened his own grip on Claire. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, no doubt laughing at him.

They spend the next forty-three minutes just like that. And during the route that has longer lead times between stops, Claire leans against him, still holding onto the railing. She’s almost as tall as him with the heeled booties she wears today. Her cheek brushes his own occasionally. And, when she’s not laughing in amusement as he takes his first metro ride in Toronto, he swears he can feel the faintest brush of her lips against his cheek.

Eventually, their stop comes and Claire waits until the train car is completely stopped before loosening the hold she has on his waist.

“Door to the right and down the stairs,” she says as the doors open and a few passengers trickle out before he steps out first.

As they make their way down the steps, she digs through her bag and finds two antiseptic wipe packages. She hands one over to him as soon as she steers him left as they exit the metro station. Merging into pedestrian traffic on the streets of downtown Toronto, he can navigate. They’re a few blocks away from York Memorial, and after they’ve sanitized their hands as much as one can without soap and water, he’s back to holding her hand. She smiles up at him before turning her head to view the pedestrians meandering through the streets.

“So,” she says as they near the atrium. He drops her hand to get the door and lets her walk through first. “What’d you think?”

He enjoyed the fact they got forty minutes of their workday all to themselves and had a legitimate excuse to hold her close. Well, she did the holding and keeping them upright. He mostly wrapped his arm around her and relished the closeness. He even liked the ride had nothing more than the ambient sounds of the metro cars sliding along the rail and the whizzing of downtown Toronto passing them by. He's sure that's not how it is at every stop, but he might be lucky today.

She catches his eye as she walks ahead of him and turns, walking backwards, and his little smile must show as he thinks about the good parts of riding the metro with Claire Malone.

“I like you being handsy in public,” he wiggles his brows. She pauses, waits for him to catch her, and jabs him in the shoulder.

“You would probably have another head trauma if I didn’t hold onto you during that ride. Especially before the first stop,” she laughs at him. They pull the doors open to lead them into the hospital administration and registration area as she continues to laugh.

“There’s nowhere to… there’s nowhere to wash your hands. To, to, eh, you know, we didn’t have a napkin or a handkerchief. It was disgusting.”

She tilts her head and laughs silently at the momentum he has going.

“And, anyway, we would have been here by now if we’d driven.”

They’d driven in all last week. He’d suitably distract her in the morning and they’d end up missing the scheduled leave time.

“Well, I like the metro. And, I’m not letting myself get sucked into your rarified air.”

He makes a face.

“What, you may get used to it?”

She laughs at him and pulls out her daily charting log from the nurses' station to catch up on what came in overnight.

A nurse stands to Jed’s left and Claire wonders if he’s distracted enough by her to not notice the nurse with a patient file, patiently waiting to be acknowledged. She points with her daily charting folder to the nurse.

“Oh, thank you,” Jed tells the nurse who nods and walks away after handing over the file.

She’s already shrugging out of her coat as their shift begins soon and she still has to change into her scrubs.

“Three injured in a car accident. ETA six minutes,” Arnold says as he comes up behind Claire.

Claire pauses and looks to Bishop.

“Go ahead,” Jed nods as he takes his glasses out of his suit coat pocket.

“Run,” she tells him, her hand moving along his shoulders and down his arm as she moves to the locker rooms to change into her scrubs.

“Okay. You, too,” he calls out as she leaves. He watches her for a moment and then moves to head to his office to rid himself of his scarf and coat and exchange his suit jacket for his white doctor’s coat.

It’s going to be one of those days.

—

It’s a few hours after they’ve had two traumas in a row when Wendy Atwater finds Claire Malone at her usual table outside across the street. Claire is eating an apple dipped in sunflower butter and has a textbook on emergency medicine that she’s flipping through. Wendy motions to the free bench and Claire nods, mouth full of her snack.

“I hear Jed took the metro,” Wendy says in greeting as she sits on the bench opposite Claire.

Claire continues to chew and smirks a little. She knows Bishop and Atwater have a daily standup to catch one another up on activities and where they'll be in case of an emergency page.

“And, I’m sure the way he tells it, there were monster germs and no place to grab and it was much dirtier than riding in his car.”

Wendy nods with a small smirk.

“Says you were handsy.”

Claire laughs and rolls her eyes.

“Of course that’s how he describes it,” she shakes her head. “I’m sure he left out the part where he flailed like a fish trying his hardest not to try to touch the handrails.”

Wendy doesn’t have to stifle a chuckle since they’re not in the building close to the gossip mongers.

Claire takes another apple and watches as Wendy imagines Jed Bishop’s public transportation adventure.

“I heard he’s already requested the same day off as you. Of course, Dutton doesn’t know,” Atwater trails off. Because Dutton barely knows who Claire is. If you’re not a doctor of substantial influence, you’re an 'other,' and he doesn't care if he knows your name or not. And, it’s less like she’s heard. More like she’s gotten around to checking her inbox and seeing her boss is planning on taking next Thursday off.

“I guess we’ll see whether or not he can actually take a day off.”

“He’s always been a bit of a workaholic,” Wendy reminds Claire as Claire nods in agreement. “But he’s a little less of an ass about everything when he can actually discuss his day. Or be a grump about it with someone who understands if he needs to be left alone or be brought out of his attitude.”

Claire breathes out a sigh and shrugs.

“How’d you do it this time?” Wendy asks, leaning her arms against the table.

Wendy’s been around York Memorial for the past eleven years. She had been hired as a trauma doctor and rose up through the ranks to attending physician six years ago. Claire had been in both interviews in her capacity as an acute nurse and later the acute nurse supervisor. And, Claire had been in a relationship with a then-newly separated Jed Bishop until five years ago. Nine years ago, when Wendy had been burned by one of the former attending doctors in the emergency department, Claire had taken her out for a drink and they’d formed a bond of wanting to burn it all down.

“He asked, actually. Kind of,” Claire finds her pen and gives it a twirl as she begins. “It was last week. I was disinfecting a cyclist’s scrape and he needed stitches. Jed came up and helped. The patient and his wife were doing a long-distance cycling trip vacation. Jed thought that was romantic. We traded ultimate vacation destinations. Later, he asked what I would say if he asked if I would go to the Baltics with him. I told him we’d start small. Take the same day off and then go from there.”

“So, he,” Wendy gave her a look. “Huh.”

“Third time's the charm, I guess?” Claire shrugged. “It seems only fitting that I started it the first and second time and he’s finally grown a pair with his second chance.”

Wendy Atwater bites her lips to keep from laughing out loud.

“We should be having twice-monthly drinks if you’re back together and need some to commiserate with,” Wendy trails off.

“Yes, please,” Claire smiles. “I think I need one and it’s only been six days.”

Wendy nods with a muffled chuckle. She taps the table twice with her fingers and looks beyond Claire’s shoulder.

Claire gets the hint and takes another one of her apples before moving the container to the empty table space beside her.

“I noticed you added a second overnight to Saturday. I’ve matched the doctors' schedule to that and added another on-call resident to Sunday,” Wendy notes a little louder than they’d been speaking before.

“With urgent care reducing their hours, I figured I’d make sure we prepare for ambulatory backups. You know everyone will come here even though we’re more expensive.”

“They did that already?” Atwater frowns. She’d heard rumblings but didn’t know they’d actually gone and done the move. It hadn’t been in the memo from the medical director, but that wasn’t surprising. Claire has feelers throughout the city’s hospital networks.

Jed Bishop comes up to the table and nods at Wendy before he sits down on the bench next to Claire.

“Breakfast? Snack?” He nods to the cut apple before reaching for a slice.

Claire tilts her head and chuckles.

“Someone said he’d use his privileges and get me a breakfast burrito for breakfast.”

He pops the entire slice of apple and sunflower butter into his mouth and chews thoughtfully for a moment.

“It’s lunch,” he reminds her that it’s two pm and the hospital stops serving breakfast at 11:30.

He counters his statement as he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a foil-wrapped mass and two little to-go containers of tomatillo salsa. He moves it to her and just as she’s about to grab for it, he pulls it back towards him.

Claire rolls her eyes. Wendy shakes her head at the two of them.

“I had to trade a week of snack privileges for this, you know,” he points out. The hospital upcharges the snacks. Like Claire’s apple and sunflower butter is a whopping five dollars for something that probably costs a dollar if you make it at home.

“Thank you for trading your snack privileges for my burrito,” she says and leans in and presses her lips to his. Her hand moves along his forearm and once she’s captured her burrito, she leans away and chuckles a little as he unconsciously follows her.

“I take it you’re not planning on sneaking around this time?” Wendy asks and Jed takes a moment to ingest her question.

Claire is busy unwrapping her burrito but has a little smirk.

“No,” Jed says as he looks at his second and gives her a grin. “It is just you, though.”

“I’ll try not to take offence. I suppose I’ll add you to the schedule whenever I’m off and Claire is on, then,” Wendy raises her brow. It’s a warning not to mess with her schedule. “Every first and third Wednesday of the month is our night.”

She motions to Claire and herself.

“I’m sorry?” Jed asks with a furrowed brow.

“We go out for dinner and drinks every first and third Wednesday. And, before you ask, no, you can’t come. We talk about you and Andrew.”

“You talk about me and your husband?”

“And other things,” Claire points out as she dips her burrito in the salsa before taking a bite.

“But, yes,” Wendy nods.

“Perhaps Andrew and I will go out on the third Wednesdays, too.”

“To try and find us?” Claire asks as she looks over at Wendy.

“No,” Jed says with an elongated ‘o,’ that implies he definitely would go to Claire’s favourite places in the city to look for her.

The three of them share a laugh at how predictable he is. Then Jed pulls Wendy into a conversation about their capacity for med school students since placements begin next quarter and he’s always deferred that sort of stuff to her. By the end of their conversation, Claire has a corner of her burrito left and wordlessly hands it over to Jed as he listens to Atwater talk about Mags’s potential and how Singh is recommending June for the chief resident position next cycle. The last few bites where it’s mostly warm tortilla and melted cheese is his favourite.

Wendy watches as the two exchange a glance and Claire wipes her mouth and hands with a napkin before Claire reaches over and Wendy can only assume the two hold hands under the tabletop. At least with these two, she doesn’t have to patrol the unused on-call rooms for improper use of on-call rooms. After all, York Memorial isn’t a medical soap opera for television, but a level one trauma center and teaching hospital.

“Should we head back?” Wendy asks as she hears sirens bounce off the glass buildings of downtown. It’s usually their signal that something is coming into their emergency department over St. Joseph’s just outside of the Financial District.

When they head back across the street, Claire is in the middle of the two doctors. It's a surprise to no one when Jed grabs a hold of her pinkie with his own as they walk back to the hospital. Claire and Wendy share a look and Wendy shakes her head with a small smile.

Jed Bishop is beyond smitten with Claire Malone and it’s refreshing to see that maybe he’ll finally leave the schedule alone and stay home rather than come back in whenever an interesting page crosses his screen.

* * *

He’s in his office packing up his laptop and notebook to head to the fifteenth floor for a budget meeting when she pops her head into his office.

“Budget meeting?” She asks even though she already knows the answer.

“Need anything? Robot intern? Robot pill dispenser machine? More hours in the day?” He quips as he tucks his belongings under his arm.

“All of the above would be nice,” she laughs and watches as he moves from behind his desk.

“Walk with me?” He gestures with his head in the general direction of the elevators as he stands next to her in his doorframe.

She nods and spins from facing his office.

“You put in a request at the end of the month to take some vacation. A whole long weekend off. Thursday to Sunday morning,” she tells him as they walk through the hospital corridors. “We have the overnight shift on Sunday. Well, I do. You're Chief, so you don't have to work from 10 pm to 6 am unless you want.”

“Did I?” He asks with a smirk. By him, she means she requested it. “I suppose my calendar invite also let my attending doctor and head nurse know, besides my boss?”

“It happens the head nurse also requested those same days off. Already approved because nurses are more efficient than doctors.”

“The hospital would fall apart without you,” he confirms.

They’re at the elevators and as he pushes the up button.

“And where are we going on this weekend vacation?” He asks.

“I thought we could go to my mom’s,” she shrugs and holds onto her file folder a little tighter. “I was going to pack up a few things before I have everything packed up or estate sale or whatever.”

He nods.

“I like your mom’s place,” he tells her as the elevator dings that it’s reached the first floor and it’s about to open. “Lunch after my meeting?”

“Come find me,” she nods as she adjusts her stethoscope around her neck.

“Text me if you need anything. Really. Anything,” he shares a look with her, telling her even if it’s a minor emergency to page or text him to get him out of the meeting he’s going to.

She shakes her head and turns back to head toward her station.

—

Halliburton is only a few hours away, so they have breakfast in Toronto before heading to the lake house. The drive, when they finally get out of the city, is full of trees changing colours. It's the sort of scenery that belongs in magazines about the wilderness of Canada that’s a stonesthrow from a major city. When he finally parks in the carport, she steps out and takes a deep breath.

“Leaves are going to fall just as the new people move in,” Claire tells him. “I won’t miss that, honestly.”

He chuckles and shakes his head at her.

The neighbour has a key for upkeep, knowing Claire’s schedule doesn’t always allow her to get time off to come up here and maintain the property.

He gets a few flat moving boxes and her backpack of supplies out of the trunk and follows her into the house. She moves around the house and opens a few windows to circulate some fresh air. She puts the coffee on and they stand in the backyard at the lakeshore before getting down to business.

“Have you ever brought Eric here?” He asks later in the afternoon as he looks at the photos on the wall. He notices there’s a few of the two of them and the two of them with her mother sitting by the dock outside. They're younger. Have a lot less weight of the world on their shoulders. His hair is less gray. He’s beaming at Claire like she’s his whole world. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had smiled like that. It really was time for a vacation.

“No,” she says as she comes up behind him. She was in the kitchen packing up a few items. “Just you.”

Her mother had died a few months before she had ended things five years ago. He had gone with her to the funeral and then to Fogo Island where her mother requested her ashes be spread. He knows she has come here since then, but with photos of him, of them, still up on the wall, he was curious about what her ex had thought about it.

Her mother adored Jed Bishop and his accent. She made him talk all the time at their Thursday night dinners when they had been together and Claire was able to pull him away from his attending duties.

“I came here on my three day weekends,” she tells him. Unlike him, she takes the occasional long “weekend,” meaning three or four days off.

He’d only been here a handful of times. It was less than a six-hour drive round trip. So, it would be justified when he took his day off and she’d want to visit her mother or get out of the city for a few hours.

“She always told me if you weren’t so married to your work, she could see you marrying me,” Claire’s lips upturned for a brief moment as she looks over at him before her mouth settles into a neutral expression as she looks back to the photo.

Jed watches as she looks at the photo between them. Her cheek twitches in a little tick as she continues to look at the photo. He's always been curious about why she ended things the first time, but he didn’t think he deserved an answer. Still doesn’t know if he really deserves it.

“I guess we both wanted things that would not have worked,” he recalls aloud and watches as she turns to him and tilts her head curiously. “It’s what you said when I asked you to dinner and you told me to piss off.”

She nods. She remembers.

“What’d you mean?” He wonders.

She turns back to their smiling faces in the photo.

“I wanted to come home to someone. To spend weekends here and maybe a mini-vacation or two once a year. Someone to confide in when I wanted to talk about my mom,” Claire shrugs.

He opens his mouth to respond but she shakes her head and he closes his mouth.

“Your work is your life, Jed. I know that. You would have wanted to try. We were already trying it, but you weren’t ready to give up all those hours at the hospital. Chief by forty-five was your goal. And, you did it. I never wanted you to have to choose between your job or us, so I made the choice for you. I thought maybe it would be easier.”

There’s a moment of silence and she’s looking at the floor. Her socks are getting a little more threadbare than usual. She’s had them for a few years and only ever wears them up in the mountains.

“Why Eric?” He asks after a wince of how accusatory it sounds and he doesn’t mean it to be.

“I don’t know,” she says with a stifled laugh because she doesn’t know. She never really talked about her mother with him. He never came here. She buried herself in work, just like Jed, and rarely came home.

“I thought maybe he’d be the safe option,” she shrugs. “He wasn’t in our field and he was always home by 5 pm and had dinner ready and did most of the chores.”

Jed nods because Kathryn was the same way. And it was stifling.

“And, suddenly, I was working all the doubles and overnights,” Claire trails off. “I was suffocating from the cookie-cutter life I thought I wanted.”

“Leaving him had nothing to do with you,” she reminds him. “I made a decision years ago out of fear of losing myself and turns out I lost myself anyway.”

She looks at him at bites her lip. Her green eyes are watery with unshed tears as she looks at a point on his T-shirt covered chest and doesn’t meet his eyes. As he moves to touch her, she sighs heavily and takes a step back.

She shrugs a shoulder and turns her back to him, abandoning the kitchen work to head upstairs.

Jed blows out a heavy breath as he hears her on the second floor. His hand moves to his hair, musing it and walks away from the photo to sit on the couch and stare at the lakefront.

He can hear the shuffling of items but knows she wants her to have her space. She’s always been good at giving that to him, so he’ll return the favour and seek her out when she’s had some time to herself.

—

He finds her in the hammock much later. The sky is navy blue and black with the stars bright and visible. It’s a sight to wonder at after not seeing them like this for years due to the city’s light pollution. Claire has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and the fire pit going behind her where the lounge chairs sit on the grass flanking the pit.

“You okay?” He asks. She’s been quiet this afternoon since their heart-to-heart of sorts. He had made her a sandwich for lunch from the items in the small cooler she had packed. Left it just outside her bedroom with a bottle of water after knocking and letting her know lunch was outside her door and he’d be downstairs if she needed anything.

“I do love this place,” she tells him and opens up one side of her blanketed arms. A silent invitation that tells him he’s allowed to invade her space.

He carefully navigates the hammock. He feels like he’s going to somehow break the thing. So, when she curls up to him, his heart is still beating a little faster than it normally would. She giggles into his shoulder and his long legs ground them so they don’t sway until he gets his bearing.

“When she first took me in, we came here,” she whispers as she tucks herself into him after she’s given him half her blanket. He’s like a portable heater and her chilled nose touches his cheek and he jerks unconsciously before chuckling and wrapping an arm around her. “For the first few weeks, I thought she was just going to murder me and dump my body in the lake, never to be seen again. She must have sensed it because she always waited to make food and serve it when I was present and she’d eat first.”

She feels more than sees him chuckling at this scenario. He’s well aware Claire ran away when she was fifteen and Francesca “Frankie” Malone, who worked as a social worker in the Greater Toronto Area youth shelter a couple of blocks from the train depot, had taken her in. Frankie had cycled through kids to help them through the roughest of rough patches. She almost had a specialty of finding the kids who were abandoned or who had abandoned their family because it was better to be homeless than continue to live in that cycle. But Frankie had only ever adopted Claire out of all the kids she helped. Her mother had seen every graduation. High school. University. Nursing school. Pictures there up on the wall for all to see.

He digs in his pocket and it jostles the hammock and she laughs as he curses under his breath.

“Organic, fair trade, dark orange chocolate,” he says as he presents the tinfoil bundle to her.

She opens the tinfoil bribe and pulls a row of three chocolates out. She wraps the chocolate brick back up and sets it on his chest. She knows he’s been working up to saying something all day, so she’s content to stare at the stars and wait for him.

“I texted Jonah today. Told him I’d like him to meet you, officially,” he says as his fingertips move across her arm in a gentle, back and forth pattern.

She bites down on the first square of chocolate. She asks about Jed’s son. But she’s never interacted with the boy outside the occasional work function when Jed would bring Kathryn and Jonah. It’s only ever happened twice when Jonah was a kid, before the divorce. Now he’s in his second year of university. She doubts he’d even remember meeting her at either of the family-friendly donor galas.

“Maybe he could come here and help take stuff back to the city? He’s got a truck,” Jed asks.

She angles her head so she can see him better and nods against him.

“Okay,” he agrees. He’ll text Jonah in the morning. They’ll be here for two more days after all.

He goes quiet again and she eats her second chocolate square. Her fingers are slowly melting the chocolate enough she contemplates popping the third square quickly. But this chocolate is meant to be savoured rather than inhaled.

“I meant it, you know,” he tells her after a while.

_I’d follow you anywhere._

“You told me I should think about how I’m going to use my second chance,” he tells her. “Well.”

He motions with his free hand around them. It bounces the hammock and he holds onto her. The chocolate bar slides down his chest and slips between them as a laugh bubbles in her chest.

They’re now mostly face-to-face with one another as they lay on their sides. If he was more coordinated, she’d be suspicious this was his plan all along. But when it comes to things that move other than a car, he’s pretty hopeless. His eyes are wide at the thought he almost toppled one or both of them. Shadows dance across his face and his hand moves to her hair. His fingers weave into her locks for a moment before he gets close enough to where their noses are touching. His is warmer than her own.

“We were something then,” he reminds her.

It was a whirlwind. It had never been illicit then. He had separated from Kathryn. Eric hadn’t been in the picture. Of the York Memorial staff, Wendy Atwater and Tom Duncan were the ones with historical knowledge of what they had been to one another. And, when it was over, Wendy Atwater had told him he was an idiot for choosing a thing that’s never going to fight for him or love him back.

She’s popped the last piece of chocolate into her mouth and subtly sucked the melted chocolate along with it. She’s pretty sure she got it all. But it’s dark.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that tomorrow and every day after, they're all yours. Lake days in the middle of summer or dead of winter. Burning Man. The Arctic. The Baltics. I want a future with you in it, Claire.”

“You know it’s still not going to be that easy,” she points out again.

His hand that had been playing with her hair slips under her sweatshirt and his fingers chill her warmed skin. Her breath catches and his nose brushes against hers more purposeful than accidental.

“No,” he agrees. Because they love what they do. But priorities shift. He won’t let her go unless she really means it. He will ask her why before she walks out the door instead of five years later. “But we’ll make it count.”

He kisses her before she can say anything else. Like this, it feels like he has all the time in the world to thoroughly distract her from telling him things they both know. Only when she’s suitably distracted does he leave her mouth and aim for his another favourite place to kiss her. There’s a hitch in her breathing as he leaves her mouth for that spot along her neck just above her collarbone where she’s ticklish.

This time it’s her hand that moves into his hair and sighs contentedly before he moves to kiss her again.

“I believe you,” she says as he pulls back. She rubs her thumb against his bottom lip and smiles at him. It’s going to be complicated, but it will also be worth it.

“Good,” he confirms with a little self-satisfied smirk.

The hand under her sweatshirt moves to press her even closer and she closes her eyes, content to listen to the sounds around them.

“Claire,” Jed whispers after what seems like only a few minutes. “Bugs live outside. I’ve seen the spiders that come out at night that one time. Can we move this inside?”

She laughs against his chest and tells him to steady the hammock before she gracefully escapes his hold and the hammock. She looks rumpled and her hair’s a mess compared to what it’s usually like. She runs her hands through her hair and watches him as he sways a little in the hammock.

“Come on,” she holds her hands out to him as she steps in front of him and he grabs them before the hammock shifts under the weight of him getting up. He throws the blanket around her shoulders like an oversized scarf.

“Don’t forget my chocolate,” she reminds him.

He muffles a curse and squints to find the tinfoil still in the hammock. Grabbing it, he holds it before she moves away with his hand still in hers.

It’s dark enough now that the fire is the only source of light. But she knows this place like the back of her hand, so she drops one of his hands and tells him to stay still as she pours the sand over the flames of the fire. She moves back to him, watching as the flames smoulder. It takes a few minutes, so she leans back against his chest to make sure flames aren’t going to start again and jump the pit to burn down the area. He wraps an arm around her and she closes her eyes, listening to the embers crackle.

When she’s judged it safe to leave the fire, she takes his hand again and leads him to the house. As they walk, he tells her she’s got to be a bat or a cat or something that can see well in the dark because he can’t see a thing.

“Just let me lead,” she whispers as she pauses.

“Always,” he confirms.

Although it’s dark, he can imagine her rolling her eyes as she scoffs. But she leads him inside and up the stairs. So, he’ll count today as a win.


End file.
